December 7, 2009

Figuring out what to tweet about on Twitter requires considering your overall Internet marketing plan.

For example, if you are trying to increase the traffic to your blog about books, you may decide to focus on tweeting links to news items related to book publishing and book marketing along with the links to your own blog posts. In this way you are establishing yourself as an expert in the book field by both the links you share and the original content you write.

Now let’s take this example a little further. You may decide to sell an ebook on publishing off your website on which your blog also resides. You may begin to add into your tweet mix occasional announcements about this ebook.

There’s a range of opinions as to how many of your tweets should be what’s called “self-serving” – promoting your own products or services – and how many should be informational or conversational or whatever.

Let’s say, though, that you do not yet have a blog or a website or a business of any kind that you want to promote.

What to tweet about in this case? Do you have any hobbies or interests?

Perhaps you are a green environment advocate. Then you could tweet information that you want to share about going green, such as links to books, news articles, and blog posts. You can add your opinions about the articles you are linking to in order to personalize your tweets.

You are establishing a brand for yourself even though you made never use that brand in connection with business. Still, you have a starting point from which to morph into a new brand if that’s what you decide to do.

Even before you get on Twitter you should decide what to tweet about. Will you be emphasizing your business views or your gardening interests?

Once you have made this decision, you can use Twitter’s own search capabilities or a third-party application such as tweetbeep.com to alert you when there are tweets connected to the topics on which you tweet. Then you can jump into the conversation and reply to people who are tweeting about these topics.

You can also follow Twitter lists that are on subjects of interest to you in order to easily track tweets connected to your topics.

As you participate more and more on Twitter, you will begin to follow people whose tweets you find especially valuable. You can study their tweets in order to decide which tweets you think are most effective in attracting followers. Then you can emulate the patterns you uncover.

Warning: Whatever you do, do NOT tweet in anger or use swear words or viciously attack someone. This is not proper etiquette and can quickly lose many of the followers you worked so hard to get – if not getting you kicked off Twitter.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her free report on “Power Marketing’s Top 3 Internet Marketing Tips” – claim your report now from www.TeachMeToUseTwitter.com